the less a false target for the enemy. Even if the enemy establishes which
are the main areas of spetsnaz operations the enemy may be too late. Many
spetsnaz groups and detachments will already be leaving the area, but those
that remain there will be ordered to step up their activity; the enemy thus
gets the impression that this area is still the main one. So as not to
dispel this illusion, the groups remaining in the area are ordered by the
Soviet high command to prepare to receive fresh spetsnaz reinforcements, are
sent increased supplies and are continually told that they are doing the
main job. But they are not told that their comrades left the area long ago
for a reserve area that has now become a main one.
At the same time as the main and reserve areas are chosen, false areas
of operations for spetsnaz are set. A false, or phoney, area is created in
the following way. A small spetsnaz group with a considerable supply of
mines is dropped into the area secretly. The group lays the mines on
important targets, setting the detonators in such a way that all the mines
will blow up at roughly the same time. Then automatic radio transmitters are
fixed up in inaccessible places which are also carefully mined. This done,
the spetsnaz group withdraws from the area and gets involved in operations
in a quite different place. Then another spetsnaz group is dropped into the
same area with the task of carrying out an especially daring operation.
This group is told that it is to be operating in an area of special
importance where there are many other groups also operating. At an agreed
moment the Soviet air force contributes a display of activity over the
particular area. For this purpose real planes are used, which have just
finished dropping genuine groups in another area. The route they follow has
to be deliberately complicated, with several phoney places where they drop
torn parachutes and shroud-lines, airborne troops' equipment, boxes of
ammunition, tins of food, and so forth.
Next day the enemy observes the following scene. In an area of dense
forest in which there are important targets there are obvious traces of the
presence of Soviet parachutists. In many places in the same area there had
been simultaneous explosions. In broad daylight a group of Soviet terrorists
had stopped the car of an important official on the road and brutally
murdered him and got away with his case full of documents. At the same time
the enemy had noted throughout the area a high degree of activity by
spetsnaz radio transmitters using a system of rapid and super-rapid
transmission which made it very difficult to trace them. What does the enemy
general have to do, with all these facts on his desk?
To lead the enemy further astray spetsnaz uses human dummies, clothed
in uniform and appropriately equipped. The dummies are dropped in such a way
that the enemy sees the drop but cannot immediately find the landing place.
For this purpose the drop is carried out over mountains or forests, but far
away from inhabited places and places where the enemy's troops are located.
The drops are usually made at dawn, sunset or on a moonlit night. They are
never made in broad daylight because it is then seen to be an obvious piece
of deception, while on a dark night the drop may not be noticed at all.
The enemy will obviously discover first the dummies in the areas which
are the main places for spetsnaz operations. The presence of the dummies may
raise doubts in the enemy's mind about whether the dummies indicate that it
is not a false target area but the very reverse.... The most important thing
is to disorient the enemy completely. If there are few spetsnaz forces
available, then it must be made to appear that there are lots of them
around. If there are plenty of them, it should be made to appear that there
are very few. If their mission is to destroy aircraft it must look as if
their main target is a power station, and vice versa. Sometimes a group will
lay mines on targets covering a long distance, such as oil pipelines,
electricity power lines, roads and bridges along the roads. In such cases
they set the first detonators to go off with a very long delay and as they
advance they make the delay steadily shorter. The group then withdraws to
one side and changes its direction of advance completely. The successive
explosions then take place in the opposite direction to the one in which the
group was moving.
Along with operations in the main, reserve and false areas there may
also be operations by spetsnaz professional groups working in conditions of
special secrecy. The Soviet air force plays no part in such operations. Even
if the groups are dropped by parachute it takes place some distance away and
the groups leave the drop zone secretly. Relatively small but very carefully
trained groups of professional athletes are chosen for such operations.
Their movements can be so carefully concealed that even their acts of
terrorism are carried out in such a way as to give the enemy the impression
that the particular tragedy is the result of some natural disaster or of
some other circumstances unconnected with Soviet military intelligence or
with terrorism in general. All the other activity of spetsnaz serves as a
sort of cover for such specially trained groups. The enemy concentrates his
attention on the main, reserve and false target areas, not suspecting the
existence of secret areas in which the organisation is also operating:
secret areas which could very easily be the most dangerous for the enemy.
--------
Chapter 14. Future Prospects
Spetsnaz continues to grow. In the first place its ranks are swelling.
In the next few years spetsnaz companies on the army level are expected to
become battalions, and there is much evidence to suggest that this process
has already begun. Such a reorganisation would mean an increase in the
strength of spetsnaz by 10,000 men. But that is not the end of it. Already
at the end of the 1970s the possibility was being discussed of increasing
the number of regiments at the strategic level from three to five. The
brigades at front level could, without any increase in the size of the
support units, raise the number of fighting battalions from three or four to
five. The possibilities of increasing the strength of spetsnaz are entirely
realistic and evoke legitimate concern among Western experts.
___
The principal direction being taken by efforts to improve the quality
of the spetsnaz formations is mechanisation. No one disputes the advantages
of mechanisation. A mechanised spetsnaz soldier is able to withdraw much
more quickly from the dropping zone. He can cover great distances much more
quickly and inspect much larger areas than can a soldier on foot. And he can
get quickly into contact with the enemy and inflict sudden blows on him, and
then get quickly away from where the enemy may strike him and pursue him.
But the problem of mechanisation is a difficult one. The spetsnaz
soldier operates in forests, marshland, mountains, deserts and even in
enormous cities. Spetsnaz
needs a vehicle capable of transporting a spetsnaz
soldier in all these conditions, and one that enables him to be as silent
and practically invisible as he is now.
There have been many scientific conferences dealing with the question
of providing spetsnaz with a means of transport, but they have not yet
produced any noticeable results. Soviet experts realise that it will not be
possible to create a single machine to meet spetsnaz needs, and that they
will have to develop a whole family of vehicles with various features, each
of them intended for operations in particular conditions.
One of the ways of increasing the mobility of spetsnaz behind enemy
lines is to provide part of the unit with very lightweight motorcycles
capable of operating on broken terrain. Various versions of the snow-tractor
are being developed for use in northern regions. Spetsnaz also uses
cross-country vehicles. Some of them amount to no more than a platform half
a metre high, a metre and a half wide and two or three metres long mounted
on six or eight wheels. Such a vehicle can easily be dropped by parachute,
and it has considerable cross-country ability in very difficult terrain,
including marshland and sand. It is capable of transporting a spetsnaz group
for long distances, and in case of necessity the group's base can be moved
around on such vehicles while the group operates on foot.
The introduction of such vehicles and motorcycles into spetsnaz does
more than increase its mobility; it also increases its fire-power through
the use of heavier armament that can be transported on the vehicles, as well
as a larger supply of ammunition.
The vehicles, motorcycles and snow-tractors are developments being
decided today, and in the near future we shall see evidence that these ideas
are being put into practice. In the more distant future the Soviet high
command wants to see the spetsnaz soldier airborne. The most likely solution
will be for each soldier to have an apparatus attached to his back which
will enable him to make jumps of several tens or even hundreds of metres.
Such an apparatus could act as a universal means of transport in any
terrain, including mountains. Since the beginning of the 1950s intensive
research has been going on in the Soviet Union on this problem. It would
appear that there have so far been no tangible achievements in this field,
but there has been no reduction in the effort put into the research, despite
many failures.
The same objective -- to make the spetsnaz soldier airborne, or at
least capable of big leaps -- has also been pursued by the Kamov design
office, which has for several decades, along with designing small
helicopters, been trying to create a midget helicopter sufficient for just
one man. Army-General Margelov once said that `an apparatus must be created
that will eliminate the boundary between the earth and the sky.' Earth-bound
vehicles cannot fly, while aircraft and helicopters are defenceless on the
ground. Margelov's idea was that they should try to create a very light
apparatus that would enable a soldier to flit like a dragon-fly from one
leaf to another. What they needed was to turn the Soviet soldier operating
behind enemy lines into a sort of insect capable of operating both on the
ground and in the air (though not very high up) and also of switching from
one state to the other without effort.
Every farmer knows that it is easier to kill a wild buffalo that is
ruining his crops than to kill a mass of insects that have descended on his
plants at night. The Soviet high command dreams of a day when the
neighbour's garden can be invaded not only by buffaloes but by mad elephants
too, and swarms of voracious insects at the same time. On a more practical
basis for now, intensive research is being conducted in the Soviet Union to
develop new ways of dropping men by parachute. The work is testing out a
variety of new ideas, one such being the `container drop', in other words
the construction of a container with several men in it which would be
dropped on one freight parachute. This method makes it possible to reduce
considerably the amount of time set aside for training soldiers how to jump
by parachute: training time which can be better spent on more useful things.
The container enables the people in it to start firing at targets as they
are landing and immediately afterwards. The container method makes it much
easier to keep the men together in one spot and solves the problem of
assembling a group after it has been dropped. But there are a whole lot of
technical problems connected with the development of such containers for air
drops, and I am not competent to judge when they may be solved.
Another idea being studied is the possibility of constructing
parachutes that can glide; hybrid creations combining the qualities of the
parachute and the hang-glider. This would make it possible for the transport
aircraft to fly along the least dangerous routes and to drop the
parachutists over safe areas far from the target they are making for. A man
using his own gliding parachute can descend slowly or remain at one level or
even climb higher. Since they are able to control the direction of their
flight the spetsnaz groups can approach their targets noiselessly from
various directions.
The hang-glider, especially one equipped with a very light motor, is
the subject of enormous interest to the GRU. It makes it possible not only
to fly from one's own territory to the enemy's territory without using
transport planes, but also to make short flights on the enemy's territory so
as to penetrate to targets, to evade any threat from the enemy and to
perform other tasks.
The hang-glider with a motor (the motodeltoplan) is the cheapest flying
machine and the one easiest to control. The motor has made it possible to
take off from quite small, even patches of ground. It is no longer necessary
to clamber up a hillside in order to take off. But the most important
feature of the motorised hand-glider is, of course, the concealment it
provides. Experiments show that very powerful radar systems are often quite
unable to detect a hang-glider. Its flight is noiseless, because the motor
is used only for taking off and gaining height. By flying with the motor
shut off the man on the hang-glider is protected from heat-seeking means of
detection and attack.
The distance that motorised hang-gliders can fly is quite sufficient
for spetsnaz. It is enough to allow a man to take off quite a long way
behind the frontier, cross it and land deep in the enemy's rear. Flight in a
dangerous area can be carried out at very low altitudes. They are now
developing in the Soviet Union a piece of equipment that will make it
possible for motorised hang-gliders to fly at very low altitudes following
the contours of the ground. Flights will have to take place at night and in
conditions of bad visibility, and a simple, lightweight but reliable
navigation aid is being developed too.
The motorised hang-glider can be used for other purposes apart from
transporting spetsnaz
behind the enemy's lines. It can be used for
identifying and even for destroying especially important enemy targets.
Experiments show that the deltoplan can carry light machine-guns,
grenade-launchers and rockets, which makes it an exceptionally dangerous
weapon in the hands of spetsnaz. The main danger presented by these
`insects' is of course not to be found in their individual qualities but in
their numbers. Any insect on its own can easily be swatted. But a swarm of
insects is a problem which demands serious thought: it is not easy to find a
way of dealing with them.
The officers commanding the GRU know exactly the sort of deltoplan that
spetsnaz needs in the foreseeable future. It has to be a machine that needs
no more than twenty-five metres to take off, has a rate of climb of not less
than a metre per second, and has a motor with a power of not more than 30
kilowatts which must have good heat isolation and make a noise of not more
than 55 decibels. The machine must be capable of lifting a payload of 120 to
150 kilograms (reconnaissance equipment, armaments, ammunition). Work on its
development, like the work carried out in the 1930s on the first midget
submarines, is being carried on simultaneously and independently by several
groups of designers.
The GRU realises that hang-gliders can be very vulnerable in daytime
and that they are also very sensitive to changes in the weather. There are
three possible ways of overcoming these difficulties: improving the
construction of the machines themselves and improving the professional
skills of the pilots; employing them suddenly and in large numbers on a wide
front, using many combinations of direction and height; and using them only
in conjunction with many other weapons and ways of fighting, and the use of
a great variety of different devices and tricks to neutralise the enemy.
At the same time as developing ways of dropping people in the enemy's
rear, work is being done on methods for returning spetsnaz units to their
own territory. This is not as important as the business of dropping them;
nevertheless there are situations when it is necessary to find some way of
transporting someone from a group, or a whole group, back to Soviet
territory. For many years now this has sometimes been done with low-flying
Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Page 23